Cooler Master CM 690 III overview & build

[Ccaution]

Hello everyone,

 

first post around these places and looking all these exquisite builds in this section, got my thinking twice before posting mine. But since it's a relatively new case I though to give it a shoot to help anyone thinking about it, make up their minds.

Well it was about time I put my "all over the mobo cardbox" pc, in a nice mid-tower case. So when the new Cooler Master 690 III came along, I took the chance to spare my poor parts all that dust they were collecting, day in day out on my office.

 

The CM 690 III is a rather compact looking ATX case (230x507x502mm) but it seems it's more that enough for my humble rig: 7+1 expansion slots in the back, USB 3.0 along with the regular I/O and buttons on top, and a rather understated and smart looking front, the way that I like 'em. Inside there's able room for my GTX 680 (up to 423mm long graphics card, with that 2.5"/3.5" cage removed) and a place to put an H100/Seidon 240 when I'll finally got my hands around one. It doesn't seem suffocating either, there's a 200mm fan in the front, and one 120mm exhausting air from the rear and every intake is dust filtered. 

 

But first things first. It all started with a box, being delivered and making it's way on the top of my tidy office (say what ?)...

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are some external view angles of the case. The front is very clean looking. On the top there's a nice compartment for your phone or flash drive, but the plastic cover seems a tad flimsy. In the back, you can immediately see that the bottom mounted psu can be installed either with the fan up or down. There are three grommeted holes for external hoses for which I don't really care, above the 7 + 1 expansion slots. I don't care for side mounted fans too, so I'll definitely stick with the window side panel option, with this one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is the bottom side, with that rather dense removable dust filter, that stays in it's place nice and firmly and the fat rubber feet. YUP that's a Trooper down there!

 

 

 

 

 

 

So let's get inside shall we? Well, no rubber grommets on those cable management holes seems kinda odd, but I liked the anti vibration rubber supporting the psu.  The top 4 x 2.5"/3.5" cage seems handy for someone going for a crazy raid but I'll remove it, since I'm using only an SSD for the OS and one mechanical HDD for temporary storage, so the bottom one should do. I have a NAS after all. It's a smart touch that "transformable"  top cage, I admit. There are three tool-free 5.25" drive bays none of which I'll populate in the foreseeable future. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the back view, and there's about 1,5cm (0.6") of space back there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nice honeycomb and dust filtering, and a huge 200mm fan behind it. It's a quiet one this one, so you'd most probably keep it there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the top view and the way to get around that 2x120mm / 2x140mm space. It's just a thumbscrew really but the cover stays where it should and I didn't notice any vibrations, later on. Also there won't be any weird spacing issues with you rad, due to those oval shaped screw holes. Brilliant!

 

 

 

 

 

 

I stumbled across the screws so I started thinking about where to put that ssd...

 

 

 

 

 

 

I could put my SSD in one of the three 3.5" bays, in that bottom HDD cage, or under the ODD cage in front, or on the bottom in front of the psu, or behind the motherboard tray - hmm lots of options there. I'll go with the bottom cage one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Both drives ready for installation. So queue the music and the drill and hammer sound effects, as I'm installing the motherboard, the PSU, and the graphics card. The air coolers can go as high as 171mm so I'm good when that Noctua NH-U12S shall arrive

 

 

 

 

 

 

A few hours later the case looked like this. The manual says microATX / ATX but I got away with my slightly wider (EATX) Maximus IV Extreme Z. It's a really tight fit, but it's in there. An i5 3570k, 2x4GB of cheapo 1600MHz DDR3 and a reference (but sexy matte black) GTX680 is pretty much the rest of my part list, along with my trusty Enermax 525w which is a few months older that the Highlander!

 

 

 

 

 

 

And here are some some angles, with the optional side window installed. Yea no cooler installed I know, God bless those courier companies...

 

 

 

 

 

 

...and the 200mm wide reason my GTX680 stays on boost most of the time

 

 

 

 

 

 

And that's about it guys, thanks for baring with my mediocre photos so far.

 

Overall I liked the CM 690 III a lot. I love the discreet design of it and the fact that I feel it won't look old, soon. The powder coating and the plastics parts were very nice too, and up to it's price point, apart from that plastic cover on the top that I find a bit flimsy but I can live with it. I'd happily trade the tool-free 5.25" mechanism (who needs optical these days?) for some rubber grommets on those cable holes, that would make it look more upscale, but other than that it's a pretty lovely all-around case. I have no doubt it could accommodate another GTX 680 for a hardcore gamer, and that I could put a AIO unit on top for some more aggressive overclocks. It will take 4 + 3 HDDs and if you have more than that, well you should already be looking for a NAS solutions imho. For anyone thinking about getting the CM 690 III I'd wholeheartedly suggest him to get the side window panel option, as well. It's a rather nice touch and makes the whole thing look even better and somehow more expensive than it really is. My crappy photos doesn't do it justice.

 

Thumbs up to Cooler Master for letting me try their new 690. Feel free to commend or ask me anything about the new 690 III. I'd really love to hear your thoughts for the case or any suggestions about the build, on how I could make it look even better.

 

Thanks for your time, everyone

[nightlitezzz]

This case is gorgeous.

[gazf1]

Great build. I have the same PSU, such a beast, 5 years and still going strong.

[LaoJr]

Oh look a TJ07 2. Now with grills and cable management holes and smaller 

[Gugos]

I've got the 690 II and it is my favourite case so far, with a really clean look but not anonymous as fractals or corsairs. This one looks even better, they finally removed a 5.25 bay to make room for 2 fans or a double rad, the filters are all easier to remove and the window is way nicer.

Sadly, they removed some useful features from the previous version:

- the hot swap on the top

- the possibility to have a couple of 3.5 cages even with all the rads installed (there was room for a 240 rad on the bottom)

- the length from front to back (why? just.. why?): it used to fit an EATX board with no problem and enough remaining space to pass the cables in the holes, which probably will be rubberized on the advanced version, as they are on mine

 

If only they have decided to keep these features, considering the price, it would be the perfect case!

[Nicktrance]

That case looks really great, especially considering it's quite inexpensive and the GPU looks really sexy in matte black . Do the PCIe power cables not fit if you pass them through the holes, though?

[Ccaution]

@nightlitezzz Thank you litezzz   

@gazf1 It's a great unit, and I almost can't hear it too

@LaoJr Smaller indeed, it's a compact looking midi when you're done building it!

@Gugos I'm with you on the EATX part, that fit was scaringly tight with the IV Extreme Z, indeed.

@Nicktrance Yea, my matte black GTX 680 gets +3 fps from just being sexy The pci-e power cables were ~2cm short to go all the way around I could have installed the psu fan-down to earn that extra length, but I rather have my psu fan looking up. I believe it's even quieter this way.

 

I saw today that the actual product page of the CM693 is up, so here you'll see most of the things that I missed mentioning 

[CJPowell27]

Nice build I would recommend some cable extensions to add some finishing sexyness. 

PS Woohoo 500 posts

[Dacho]

Great case. Sweet build

[faiq]

my cm 693 build, all cooler master all msi, core i5 3570k (4.9 ghz), msi gtx 660ti power oc, corsair dominator 32gb, ocz vertex 4 ssd 128, 2 tb western digital black. For starcraft 2, cant upload better photos due to the 2mb limit on uploads, let me know what you guys think.

[Analog]

Very nice build!

[razorbum]

my cm 693 build, all cooler master all msi, core i5 3570k (4.9 ghz), msi gtx 660ti power oc, corsair dominator 32gb, ocz vertex 4 ssd 128, 2 tb western digital black. For starcraft 2, cant upload better photos due to the 2mb limit on uploads, let me know what you guys think.

 

What kind of LED fans are those? I'm getting a CM690iii too and I was debating between LED light or LED fans. I think your fans light it up really nicely!

[cinnamoncider]

They new revision for the Cooler Master 690 III has rubber grommets in it - finally